Friday, May 21, 2010

Surtex dancing in my head...

A hotel in New Jersey is not where I'd thought I would be a week ago, but having a change of environment can be good for the artist that is constantly tied to their home studio. My boyfriend had to travel for RISD, so I happily came along to get a break from my messy drafting table.

Surtex had some really good stuff this year- not as many cheesy snowmen or beach scenes. No, there were many artists that I liked and I can definitely see my style of illustration entering the surface design market. However, I realized that the trick is going to be fitting in while not fitting in too much. Basically, I still need to stand out in some way (in a good way, of course) and not loose the flavor of my illustrations.

I also have been practicing and struggling and practicing...and struggling some more with how to make my surface design. My illustrations are paintings and that works great, but for the SD market vector art is popular and also much easier to manipulate color-wise, etc. Obviously you can scan in traditionally-painted artwork and manipulate it in photoshop, but indexing the color and clean up is much more frustrating for me, and in the end my work can have this stale look to it after the process. I'm working on a print in Adobe Illustrator today in the lobby and hope to post that soon. Here I come, pen tool!

3 comments:

I know exactly what you mean. I studied Textile design, digital print, at BA, but know what yo mean about vector based art. I hand draw lots of my work, but I also really like vector art, I just can't do it. Plan is to create a collection of work, then approch an agent in the textiles, and surface print industry.I need a graphics tablet to do much of this.

About Me

After graduating from the Illustration Department of The Rhode Island School of Design, my artwork has appeared in magazines and books, on products, as well as shown in galleries across the country. I taught Illustration at Montserrat College of Art and The RISD before starting a new chapter at C.R. Gibson working in the Gift & Stationery industry as a designer. Now I am a full-time freelance illustrator and can be found teaching at Watkin's College of Art and Design CE Program. Clients include Scholastic Press, Galison, and Girls' Life.